BE PREPARED. Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer (Orion £17.99; offer £16.19) is not a Harry Bosch novel. I do not know whether or not Connelly has put aside for ever his superb Los Angeles detective — one of crime fiction’s finest creations — but I admit I was apprehensive. Writers who invent great cops rarely reach the same level of excellence with their subsequent books.

The Lincoln Lawyer shows that Connelly is not a one-character author. The title refers to Mickey Haller, small-time defence attorney without even an office, using his Lincoln to conduct his business as well as to take him from court to court, to earn pathetic fees for defending low lifes.

He dreams of a getting a long case where the accused is rich and pays him decent money. Along comes Louis Roulet, a millionaire real estate agent with a domineering mother.

He is charged with the brutal killing of a prostitute in her apartment. There follows a terrific courtroom drama in which neither Haller nor the reader really knows if Roulet is guilty or has been set up. Haller and his opponent on the prosecution side make use of every legal trick — never mind the truth — as the twists, shocks and surprises mount. Unlike Scott Turow and John Grisham, Connelly is not a lawyer, but he seems totally at ease in the murky world of the criminal courts.

Walter Mosley’s tenth Easy Rawlins novel Cinnamon Kiss (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £12.99; offer £11.69) has reached California’s summer of love in 1966. Easy is in urgent need of a lot of money, to pay for treatment for his adopted daughter Feather, suffering from a rare disease.

He considers taking part in an armed robbery organised by his faithful though psychopathic friend Mouse, but fortunately another earning opportunity comes his way. He is hired to find an attorney who has disappeared with documents from Nazi times; Cinnamon is his stunning assistant. Easy leaves his familiar Los Angeles to delve in San Francisco, a lot of people get killed, there’s an excellent villain in a snakeskin jacket and Easy is in emotional turmoil over his lover Bonnie.

As usual, just as — perhaps more — absorbing than the plot itself is Easy’s journey as a black man struggling through the social and racial politics of West Coast America.

Cinnamon Kiss takes place only two years after the Watts riots in Los Angeles (portrayed in Little Scarlet, the previous Easy novel) but much has changed — at least on the surface. Hippies and communes have arrived; white kids are smoking a lot of dope and having unrestrained sex; rife racism has diminished. Easy, a little out of touch and bemused, finds solace in the beds of many women. Yet another Mosley winner.

Rafael Reig’s Blood in the Saddle (Serpent’s Tail £8.99, offer £8.54, translator Paul Hammond) was a big hit in Spain and nominated for its equivalent of the Booker prize. It is an exuberant mix of comedy, satire and mystery, all overlaid with a dollop of surrealism.

Carlos Clot is a stereotypically shambolic private eye, gloomy and frequently drunk. He differs from his colleagues in one important respect — he’s good at finding missing fictional persons. The author of the hugely popular Spunk McCain westerns comes to him in distress — the heroine of his new novel has escaped, and he can’t finish the book until she has been found.

Clot’s inquiries lead him into more logical absurdities. Perhaps some of the jokes and references will be lost on the English reader, but there’s enough fun and wit to satisfy.

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